Skip to content
GET INVOLVED
marine-spotlight-hero

DELAWARE

strategyroom-whitworth-1536x1536Brendan Whitworth

CEO, Anheuser-Busch | Raised in Wilmington, Delaware

Brendan Whitworth is CEO, Anheuser-Busch, America’s largest brewing company. His journey to the executive suite of a leading American beer manufacturer began with his service in the Marine Corps, which he thought about joining as a child growing up in Wilmington, Delaware.

In an interview with Fox Business, Whitworth said he had a long appreciation of government and military service and was inspired to join the Marines by his grandfather, who worked for the FBI under President Hoover and later ran training exercises at Marine Corp Base Quantico, Virginia.

"I felt fortunate to have been born in the United States," said Whitworth. "I felt like I needed to pay that back like I had a bit of indebtedness that I needed to pay."

While an undergrad at Bucknell University, Whitworth attended Officer Candidates School (OCS) at Quantico, where graduation candidates are commissioned as officers in the United States Marine Corps. After graduating OCS and Bucknell, Whitworth served three years with the Marines as a First Lieutenant, led a platoon of over 70 Marines, managed a staff of eight senior non-commissioned officers, and was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for exceptional service and performance.

Whitworth did not immediately move to the business world after his service with the Marine Corps. He spent the next five years with the CIA as an Operations Officer for the Counterterrorism Center. In 2006, following his time with the CIA, he attended Harvard Business School, which led to an executive position with PepsiCo in 2008.

In 2013, Whitworth joined Anheuser-Busch and in July 2021 was named CEO. Throughout his business career, Whitworth has credited his success to the skills he developed as a Marine and the ways the Marine Corps nurtured his leadership abilities.

“They put you through a process to screen you, to see if you do have the capabilities to lead Marines," he said. "Then they give you what they believe are the right leadership principles … and then they give you a platoon of Marines, and you have to go see if that all works."